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Valiance Online cancels Kickstarter, seeks stress test applicants
Silverhelm Studios has announced that Valiance Online will be accepting sign-ups for its inbound stress test starting today. Valiance Online is one of at least three fan-led superhero MMORPGs attempting to fill the City of Heroes niche, though Valiance has no intention of licensing the CoH IP if fan efforts to purchase it from NCsoft are ultimately successful. It promises semi-freeform character builds, power customization, an open world environment, 25 zones, character alignment, and a player-run economy. The Kickstarter for the game, begun less than a month ago, was apparently canceled ahead of schedule last night with $34,680 raised of its $150,000 goal. A dev posts suggests the loss of the team's marketing manager during the campaign was a setback. Developers have assured backers that they will not be charged and that the game will continue development. "We're still running funding campaigns on our website for anyone interested and are discussing other options as well," says the studio in the Kickstarter comments. Stress test signups will open on the official site later today. [Source: Silverhelm press release]
Valiance Online launches its Kickstarter today [Updated: It's live now!]
A post on Valiance Online's Facebook has good news for fans of the upcoming game: SilverHelm Studios will be bringing the game to Kickstarter today. "It's packed with all manner of goodies for you to get your hands on," Design Director Nate "Paramount" Vogeding writes. "These things will be exclusive to our KS backers and backers alone. That's right; it won't be coming back around again." Vogeding also promises more pre-alpha invites and tells readers to "let everyone know that yes, there is a city coming back and very soon!" Valiance Online is one of several fan-backed superhero MMOs vying to become City of Heroes' spiritual successor. In September, SilverHelm told followers that it will not be licensing the CoH IP if it is eventually secured from NCsoft by City of Titans. [Update: The Kickstarter is now live, with pledges ranging from $1-$10,000 and a funding goal of $150,000. We've embedded the trailer below.]
Second Life's Linden Lab confirms new virtual world in development
Linden Lab has confirmed that it is currently working on a new virtual world in the spirit of Second Life. According to an official statement at New World Notes, this new project will be "an open world where users have incredible power to create anything they can imagine and content creators are king." If that sounds exactly like the description for Second Life already, the studio points out that, "The next generation virtual world will go far beyond what is possible with Second Life, and we don't want to constrain our development by setting backward compatibility with Second Life as an absolute requirement from the start." But Linden Lab assures current Second Life users that this doesn't spell the end for their favorite virtual world. "Second Life has many years ahead of it," the statement continues. "And in addition to improvements and new developments specifically for Second Life, we think that much of the work we do for the next generation project will also be beneficial for Second Life." A video of the developers meeting that discusses this project is expected to be released soon. [Thanks for the tip, Zenaphex!]
